100 Books Like Why We Die

This is a well-known ‘classic’ book about illness, how it makes us feel and what it means. It is beautifully written and provocative.

It is important to me because it is about health and disease on a human level, raising all sorts of issues that have to be navigated alongside scientific advancements.

Bill Bryson is, to me, one of the greatest all-time nonfiction authors, and it’s just wonderful that he wrote this book about the human body. It is inspiring, surprising, and laugh-out-loud funny.

There’s even a short bit in this book about him visiting my own University research lab! 

Tom Ireland writes extremely well. Although this is his first book, it is clear that he has a lot of experience in writing well from his job as editor of a popular science magazine.

The story being presented here is about how the science of phages has unraveled over the last 130 years or so and how they are important in many areas of contemporary science and medicine today. There are not many truly original stories left to tell–there are, for example, any number of books on evolution–but here is a story that is genuinely thrilling and new.

This book is simply phenomenal: easy to read and with stunning pictures. Its author, Philipp Dettmer, is the founder of Kurzgesagt, German for ‘In a nutshell,’ a YouTube channel featuring popular science animations with a gazillion subscribers and over 1.5 billion views.

The art and design of what he does are what sets him apart, and this book is no exception. The nitty-gritty of the immune system has been especially important to him ever since he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of thirty-two. 

"I bit my mom on the toe this morning" might be one of my favorite opening lines for a picture book.

I love it when a sad book also makes room for playfulness and humor. It also has the loveliest illustrations, utilizing soft pencil lines and a limited color palette to match the gentleness of the text.

This book is a great example of how specificity can make a story feel so genuine and relatable, no matter who the reader is.

Asha visits India every summer, filling her yellow suitcase with gifts for Grandma. When Asha returns to California, Grandma fills the suitcase with gifts for Asha. This summer, though, Grandma is gone, and the house isn’t the same without her there. Grandma’s final gift for Asha’s yellow suitcase—a quilt made from her saris that she created before she died—brings comfort to both Asha and the reader. 

This story allows readers to explore how a place feels without a special loved one there, and colorful illustrations bring brightness to this difficult subject. An author’s note shares that Sriram and her family also lost a grandparent and she used her family’s experiences as inspiration for this story in the hopes that it will bring comfort to others.

Dr. Ira Byock is a well-known authority in palliative care and hospice and a wonderful storyteller. In his stories, he talks about the physical realities of the dying process, the emotional despair we may witness, or how to handle family dynamics. He doesn't shy away from reflecting on his personal growth doing this work, which makes this book deeply human and relatable. Dying Well was published several years ago. It is still an informative and insightful read, especially if you are a family caregiver and care for a loved one. Please also check out his other books, Four Things That Matter Most and The Best Care Possible.

I’m amazed that more people aren’t talking about this book. It falls in line with the vampire romance genre so effortlessly, and yet it is egregiously overlooked. I remember reading it years ago when I was a teenager and being totally entranced. There’s this beautiful lilt to the writing, and the plot is so richly complex. It deals with the subject of immortality in such an interesting way, comparing the endless life of this vampire to the swiftly expiring life of this girl’s mother. The romance itself is actually refreshing as well. There’s this soft, sweet gallantry that you don’t see a lot in modern work, in my opinion.

I recommend this book to everyone I know, because it really is as the subtitle suggests—a way to be more fully alive by remembering that we are all going to die! Something that really helped me was the chapter on how to “find rest in the middle of things.” I don’t know about you, but my life is filled with a lot of responsibility, including being a caregiver for my 94-year-old mom. Then there’s everything happening in the world that adds to increased stress levels. Since reading this book, I’ve had more rest, from getaways to 10-minute walks to one simple but conscious breath. The stories shared are profound, and Frank’s gentle manner and wise teachings have been a true inspiration to me. 

When I began looking into how we humans send off our dead, this was the first book I read. Both moving and funny, it remains one of my favorites. Lynch, a poet, author, and professional undertaker, writes unsentimentally but with great compassion about the business of burying the dead.

While Lynch is critical of modern approaches to death—which he compares to the flush toilet, allowing us to quickly remove unpleasant reminders of our failing bodies—his book left me with a new understanding of the importance of the services provided by those who work in “the dismal trade.”